Cooking Class

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As you probably guessed from the title, we went cooking today. The van from Thai Farm Cooking picked us up at 8:30 and we joined a young group of Germans who would attend the 'class' with us. The van took us to a local market and our instructor, Wass, took us on a short walk by the stalls, explaining some of the ingredients we'll be using today. Then we had about 20 minutes to wander and explore. Gilat and I tried some fresh jackfruit (yum!) and I tried a roasted caterpillar (less yum. Maybe as a crunchy addition to something else). We saw a few stalls preparing small floats for the festival of lights this evening and lots of stalls selling candles in little clay cups.

We got back on the van and drove to the farm. We got big straw hats and red aprons, and had a short tour of the farm. Wass showed us some of the vegetables that grow there, and that we'd use. Some we knew or heard of, like lemongrass, bananas and hot chili peppers. Others were totally new to us, like blue pea butterfly vine, which is a blue flower that's used to color food, and two kinds of eggplant, one the size of a blueberry, the other about as big as a golf ball, and both eaten green or barely cooked.

Wass then set us at our work stations, each of us with our own cutting board, knife, mortar & pestle. We started with curry. Wass showed us the ingredients we'd use and how to cut them and ground them to a paste. We each got a tray with our ingredients set out and started working. Cutting, tasting, pounding until we had our curry paste. Gilat made green and mine was red. We'd use the curry later. now it was time for soup. Again Wass showed us the ingredients, preparation and cooking (once the ingredients are ready it takes just a few minutes to make the soup) and we went to our cooking stations (set up kind of like 'Master Chef'). Gilat made Won ton soup and mine was coconut milk soup, and both turned out absolutely delicious.

Our next dish was curry chicken, with our own curry of course. Again, a very quick fry-up of our curry with thin slices of chicken, a but of oil, some coconut milk and fish sauce, and voila! But that was for later, so we covered the curry and went on to Pad Thai. Prepare a sauce, put some oil in the wok, add the ingredients in order one by one, each one a few seconds before adding the next, and it's done.

Now it's time to eat! Curry chicken and pad thai, both garnished for best Instagram-worthy pictures! And they tasted pretty good too.

Ok, so what's next? You can't have such a wonderful dinner without dessert, right? I agree. Dessert was sliced banana in coconut milk, with a bit of palm sugar and garnished with blue pea butterfly flowers. A perfect way to end a really great experience and meal!

After that meal we had a hard time moving ourselves! But we managed to fit back into the van, and driven back to our hotels. That was a great experience, I highly recommend it!

Back at the hotel, Gilat and I had a short rest and then went out to the nearest laundromat. It's about that time in our trip.

Later in the evening we went out to see the festival of lights, Loy Krathong Festival. All the streets leading to the river were crowded with people, scooters and cars, even more than usual! The streets were decorated, many houses, businesses and temples had clay candles and paper lanterns set out, food stalls everywhere, and firecrackers going off all over the place!

On the way to the river Gilat and I stepped into one of the temples and I bought a blessing lantern. You select your lantern, and write your blessing on a note. The monks there attach your blessing to your lantern, light the candle, and you hang it on a prepared wire in the temple.

We made our way through the crowds to the river, and watched people lighting the candles or incense on their decorated floats and releasing them on the river. Little candle flames in flower filled baskets filled the river, it was beautiful! And above, despite the COVID-instigated ban, people were releasing sky lanterns into the air, which floated up like little hot air balloons. Kids were shooting off fireworks of all sizes (safety? What's that?), stalls lined the streets along the river selling all manner of floats, fireworks and food, and in general it was very festive! And by the time we made it back to the hotel we were exhausted! And tomorrow is another exciting day.

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